An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it........... Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position........... First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi

RASHTRIYA SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH: A PRIMER

ORIGINS & IDEOLOGY

RSS is the acronym commonly used to refer to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or National Volunteer Corps. The organization was started in 1925 to specifically ‘revive’ Hindu culture which was claimed to be under the onslaught of “foreign” cultural and political influences primarily, Muslims, but also secularists. The RSS drew ideological inspiration from the (then) recently triumphant Fascist movement led by Mussolini (the Fasci di Combattimento had taken power in Italy by 1924). K.B. Hedgewar, the founder of RSS, was greatly influenced by B.S. Moonje, his mentor, who had traveled to Italy to meet with Mussolini and study Fascism. Moonje played a crucial role in molding the RSS along fascist lines and was deeply impressed by the vision of the fascist organizations. He recorded in his diary:

The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people... India and particularly Hindu Indians need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus: so that the artificial distinction so much emphasized by the British of martial and non–martial classes amongst the Hindus may disappear… Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr. Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived. I will spend the rest of my life in developing and extending this Institution of Dr. Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra and other provinces.86

Ideologically, the RSS advocates a form of “Hindu nationalism,” which seeks to establish India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation), and rejects the notion of a composite and pluralist Indian identity historically developed as a complex synthesis of different cultures and faiths. This particular ideology has been given various labels but the term of choice—for all sides—in the current discourse is Hindutva, literally translated as Hinduness or Hinduhood, but in reality promoting only a narrow, violent and intolerant ideology, instead of the diverse and plural streams of faiths that comprise Hinduism. Hindutva is thus “Hindu chauvinism” based upon an exclusionary and discriminatory ideology built around a complex and ingenious definition of “who belongs” or “does not belong” to the Indian nation. Probably the most explicit characterization of the question of “belonging” was provided by the second sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the RSS, M. S. Golwalkar. He writes:

The foreign races in Hindusthan [India] must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must loose (sic) their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen's rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country.” [emphasis added]87

Golwalkar’s commentary on who belongs to the Hindu Nation, apart from its open fascist overtones, is peculiar because it contradicts the popular understanding of Hinduism as a religion. Instead, it frames Hinduism as a culture and Hindus as a “race” who adhere to a Hindu culture. In this peculiar redefinition lies the specificity of Hindutva’s fascism. It is unlike most of Euro-American fascism—whether it be Nazism and its notion of Aryan purity or neo-fascist movements such as the KKK or BNP—which are all biologically defined ideas of racial purity. Hindutva’s cultural basis seems to remove it from such standard forms of fascism. However, the equation of race with culture – as in Golwalkar’s “Hindu race and culture” – introduces a notion of purity and natural difference through the back door. Lochtefeld (1996), analyzing Savarkar, the man who was one of the fathers of the RSS, unpacks this redefinition as follows:

Savarkar [who first expounded on the Hindu Nation] defined a Hindu as anyone regarding India as a fatherland and holy land, and to this day these remain the litmus test. This defines the Hindu nation on cultural criteria—as a people united by a common cultural heritage—and from the start Hindutva proponents have insisted that the word ‘Hindu’ refers to a cultural rather than a religious community…. One must look at who this definition excludes. Savarkar’s definition of a Hindu is plastic enough to include everyone in a notoriously polyform tradition, but the condition that one regard India as the Holy Land largely excludes both Muslims and Christians. This definition equates Hindu identity and Indian nationalism, meaning that religious minorities are not only ‘aliens’, but because of their ‘extraterritorial loyalties’ (to holy lands in Arabia and Israel), they are also potential traitors.”88

The ingenuity of tying culture and race together is that it makes possible a definition of a “pure” nation where none is otherwise possible. By defining “belonging” through a territorially contained notion of culture, it becomes possible to denote some minorities as within the ambit of “the Hindu” and others as outside it. A large number of minorities —Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, for instance—are objects of integration. So also, Dalits and adivasis (tribals), though historically oppressed by caste Hindus, are in this definition not excluded from the nation. The idea here is to redefine these minorities as “Hindu”—where a certain specific upper caste Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma), is the hegemonic pure form—and all others are at varying distance from this purity. In contrast, Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jews, are clearly defined as outside the fold of the nation—despite their having been part of India for millennia—because their cultural signifiers are constructed by Hindutva as being external to the territorial nation assumed to be fundamentally and originally Hindu.

The definition of “pure” is what aligns Hindutva with classical fascism of the Nazi kind. Clearly inspired and convinced by the Nazi experiment of attempting to purge a land of all those who don’t fit into a definition of German-Aryan purity, Golwalkar writes:

German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well–nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.89

Clearly then, the Sangh’s ideology is simultaneously a modern Indian and European mix. The Sangh’s broad ideas of purity and exclusion are not very different from Nazism and their vision of society is a virtual replica of Fascism. However, the peculiar conflation of culture and race does make this brand of Nazism/Fascism unique. Some commentators have also noted the parallels in behavior and operation between the RSS and the Taliban, and have coined the term “Vedic Taliban” as an appropriate contemporary way to refer to the RSS.

THE SANGH AND VIOLENCE

Violence is a core aspect of the Sangh’s Hindutva ideology. The RSS has never been shy of advocating violence for the achievement of its goals of a Hindu Rashtra. With a history of inciting and conducting violent campaigns going back to the partition of India and Pakistan, there is no greater exemplar of Hindutva as a fundamentally violent movement than the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: on January 30, 1948, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot dead by Nathuram Godse, a prominent Hindutva exponent. After Gandhi’s murder, the RSS made many public denials of its association of Godse, but the falsity of these denials is clear from many associated facts:

Godse’s assassination of Gandhi was not the first but the sixth attempt on Gandhi’s life by the Hindutva movement.90 The thesis that Godse was an exception and a misguided young man marginally associated with Hindutva, fades in light of this history of attempts from within the movement. The reaction of the RSS to the murder of Gandhi was one of open elation: RSS members celebrated openly on the streets. Even the then Home Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was not entirely unsympathetic to the RSS, felt compelled to express his disgust to the then RSS supremo, M.S. Golwalkar, in a letter dated September 11, 1948:91

As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government or of the people no more remained for the RSS. In fact, opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji's death.

Years later, Gopal Godse, one of the co-accused in the Gandhi murder case and Nathuram Godse’s brother, confirmed that both he and his brother were actively involved with the RSS at the time of the assassination. In an interview in 1994, he stated:92

All the brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah [intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he had left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar [the then RSS Supremo] and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.93

So Hindutva, which began its work in a newly independent India with the murder of an apostle of peace and respect for all communities, has today surfaced in its open and naked form—as a fundamentally fascist movement. It depicts Hinduism as constantly under threat from external, foreign forces (of Islam, Christianity and Secularism), and hence, portrays violence against Muslims, Christians and advocates of pluralism in India as a form of self-defense. This “self defense” is further positioned as the process of regeneration of Hindu manhood. This twin trope of “self-defense” and “lost manhood” that is in need of recovery are part of the daily rhetoric of Hindutva. This psychological justification of violence is under-girded by a more open strategic and essential appreciation of violence, whether it be Golwalkar’s open appreciation for the efforts of the Nazis in Germany towards “purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews,” or Moonje’s hope that the RSS would create conditions of a “military regeneration of Hindus”, and prepare “our boys in the game of killing masses of people.”94 Violence for the Sangh is clearly essential to ensure that the minorities live in fear and seek no privileges of citizenship.

There is ample evidence that this essential and strategic understanding of violence is central to the Hindutva project. Numerous government reports have clearly indicted the Sangh for fomenting communal violence.95 Violence for the RSS is part of a strategy of destroying an integrated multi-religious society and creating polarized communities of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. In a recent film on the RSS, “Men in the Tree,” filmmaker Lalit Vachani records a series of critical interviews with former RSS members. These men speak openly of how it was part of their work as RSS swayamsevaks (volunteers) to create and spread rumors that would produce conditions conducive for a communal riot. The gradual but continuous polarization of the religious communities through violence is a fundamental fact of the Sangh strategy.

As the RSS has grown more powerful and gained legislative power through its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its strategic use of state power and riots to polarize religious communities has started the process of fundamentally destroying and displacing minority communities. Religious violence in India is no longer mobs fighting in the streets, as unfortunate as that was, but is increasingly taking the form of organized pogroms to eliminate and reduce minority communities to rubble. In 1998, when the BJP-led coalition formed the Central Government, attacks against Christian communities escalated significantly.96 But Gujarat 2002 marks the most vicious, brutal and meticulously planned Sangh-led pogrom against the minorities. Starting on February 28, 2004, and continuing for months afterwards, the Sangh orchestrated the massacre of close to 2000 Muslims, while over 150,000 Muslims were made homeless, thousands of Muslim women raped, mutilated and killed, and Muslim businesses specifically targeted, destroyed and annexed. The BJP state government not only did nothing to protect its minority citizenry; it actively colluded with the killers. Numerous autonomous human rights groups have documented the genocide and the Sangh involvement in it. According to the Human Right Watch:

The groups most directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government. Collectively, they are known as the sangh parivar, or family of Hindu nationalist organizations. … Numerous police reports filed by eyewitnesses after the attacks have specifically named local VHP, BJP, and Bajrang Dal leaders as instigators or participants in the violence.97

THE INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF HINDUTVA

As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy—it is only open to Hindu males, it maintains no membership records, it has resisted being registered with the government of India as a public/charitable trust, it has no known bank accounts and does not file tax returns. The RSS functions primarily through hundreds of front organizations, organizations that cover a broad range and exist in every facet of sociopolitical life not only in India, but increasingly also among the diaspora. Although these organizations claim to be independent of the Sangh, they are all supervised by volunteers from the Sangh and centrally coordinated. While the RSS itself cannot currently accept monetary contributions for its activities from abroad, each of the Sangh-affiliated organizations has been designated a ‘charity’ and the Sangh actively solicits funding for these organizations. Given that the RSS has no corporate form and ensures an ambiguity around its form and function, it would be quite correct to argue that this myriad of smaller organizations together is what precisely constitutes the RSS. This ‘family’ of organizations is collectively referred to as the Sangh Parivar, or simply as the Sangh. Details of the visible structure of the Sangh Parivar and its chief constituent organizations can be found elsewhere so we only provide a summary here.

The core unit of the RSS is referred to as a shakha (literally “branch,” but better understood as a cell). The shakha is a place for RSS swayamsevaks (volunteers) to come together for physical and ideological training. These shakhas operate in tens of thousands of neighborhoods in India (and increasingly in the U.S. and the U.K.) and serve as the primary source of recruits who can then be molded to become the foot-soldiers for the Sangh’s projects and organizations. Here too, specific links can be drawn between European fascism and the RSS. B. S. Moonje, the mentor of Hedgewar, the founding father of the RSS, visited and met with Mussolini and was granted permission by Mussolini to observe and understand the nature of the fascist organizational structure.98

Moonje’s central concern while looking at Italian fascism was, as he says, with the aim of “developing and extending this Institution.” Thus the RSS cell structure of shakhas grew with some clear similarity to the cell structure of Mussolini’s Black Shirts (the militant arm of the Fasci di combattimento, largely comprised of youth), borrowing with it the core ideas of physical training of youth and militarism. Moonje’s writings are very explicit in acknowledging the centrality of violent militarism to the RSS strategy. In his preface to The Scheme of the Central Hindu Military Society and its Military School, he declared:

This training is meant for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the best possible causalities (sic) of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the adversary.99,100

The army of swayamsevaks deployed by the Sangh carries out the spread of the Hindutva ideology in India at the grassroots level. The recruitment and ideological orientation towards Hindutva is done on many levels and fronts: at the grade school level, or earlier, with Hinduised education, including such activities as the holding of Ramayan and Mahabharat competitions for school children in tribal areas—largely with the goal of supplanting tribal culture and traditions, with the forced ‘celebration’ of Hindu festivals on a grand scale in areas with large non-Hindu populations, and simultaneously with the distribution of anti-minority pamphlets and literature, and finally with more direct action such as the grabbing of minority-owned land or property and the incitement of riots and murder.

The swayamsevaks generated at the Shakhas are seamlessly tied into the Sangh Parivar infrastructure. Swayamsevaks go on to direct and run, projects of every size and shape – from the Seva Vibhag (service wing) operations such as Sewa Bharati, Ekal Vidyalayas and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams to Bal Vihars (children’s centers) to opening up new shakhas, from student politics through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to national politics through the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from religious militancy through the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to organized mob violence through terrorist/paramilitary groups such as the Bajrang Dal.

Most of these institutions also have an equivalent organization in the US; the RSS has its image mirrored through the HSS, the BJP in the OFBJP, the VHP in the VHP of America, its student wing the ABVP in HSC, the Bajrang Dal in Hindu Unity, and the Seva Vibhag in organizations such as the IDRF. Over the last three decades, and accelerating over the last decade and a half—coincident with the BJP’s rise in electoral politics in India—the Sangh Parivar has expanded its operations outside India and made significant efforts to reach the ‘Hindu’ diaspora, especially in the US, the UK and the Caribbean.

Below is a brief description of the major components of the Sangh Parivar—the Indian organization first, followed by its US equivalent. The chart (figure 1) following the summary below provides a visual representation of the Sangh structure.

RSS: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the core fount of Hindutva Ideology.

HSS: The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh is the US equivalent of the RSS. The HSS is registered as a tax-exempt charity in the US, and like the RSS in India, is one of the main proponents of Hindutva in the US. According to one of its flyers, “HSS is [sic] started in the USA and other parts of the world to continue what RSS is doing in India.”101 The RSS website states that the primary purpose of the HSS is to protect the children of Hindu parents from the “vicious propaganda and corrupt conversion techniques of Christians and Muslims.”102 Note the central concern of diasporic life in this definition is the possible “impurity” of Christian or Islamic influence. Much like the RSS branches in India, HSS also holds physical and ideological training sessions and camps. The structure of the RSS is duplicated in the US, with the Sanghchalak of the HSS being the highest office bearer in the US.

BJP: The Bharatiya Janata Party is the political arm of the Sangh Parivar that participates in electoral politics. It is currently in power in the Indian state of Gujarat, which recently witnessed some of the most gruesome violence against Muslims. At the center in New Delhi, it was the leading member of the coalition that was in power until it lost in the national elections in India in early 2004 (but still managed to retain the second largest number of seats in the Parliament of India).

OFBJP: The Overseas Friends of BJP is the BJP support group in the US. While it cannot monetarily support the BJP directly from the US, many OFBJP functionaries work with other Sangh operations in the US to propagate Hindutva. In addition, it works to mobilize opinion in Washington D.C and invites BJP leadership from India to the US to meet with the Indian Diaspora.

VHP: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad was formed in 1964 with the explicit purpose of forming an aggressive and an activist wing to promote Hindutva. The first general secretary of the VHP, S.S. Apte, made its goals clear as follows: “It is therefore necessary in this age of competition and conflict to think of, and organize, the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all three” [all three being Christianity, Islam and Communism].103 Since its formation, the VHP has played an aggressive and agitational role in India. It rose to prominence for spearheading—from the early 1980s onwards—the so-called Ram Janmabhoomi movement that ultimately led to the violent take over and destruction of the 16th century Babri mosque in the town of Ayodhya in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, followed by nationwide celebratory rioting by elements of the Sangh that resulted in the killing of several thousand Muslims. More recently, the VHP’s international working president, Mr. Ashok Singhal, called the carnage against Muslims in Gujarat a “successful experiment” and warned that it would be repeated all over India.104 The VHP thus functions as the arm of the Sangh that directly creates and spreads conditions of religious intolerance and violence.

VHPA: The VHP of America is the US counterpart of the VHP in India, and has many chapters in large parts of the North East and the South with the primary function of support work for the Sangh in India among the professional Indian diaspora. It also spawned the Hindu Students Council (HSC), a student organization with significant presence on American university campuses (facing global condemnation in the aftermath of the carnage in Gujarat, and likely in an attempt to build in some legal distance, HSC was spun off as a separate entity in early 2003). Its work within the professional Indian diasporic community is essentially both ideological and fund raising. Though it claims to be independent of the VHP itself, this is at best a technical legal distinction. In real terms it works actively and in close cooperation with VHP, India. For instance, VHPA’s biggest event to date in the US was the World Vision 2000, a conference organized in Washington D.C. The guest list for that event included nearly every luminary in the VHP India hierarchy. In addition, the VHPA promotes fund collection for a range of Sewa Vibhag activity in India.105

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP): This is the youth wing of the Sangh, operating throughout university campuses in India. It takes active part in student body elections at universities, vigorously propagating the Sangh’s hate ideology on college campuses. ABVP provides a space where the future VHP and RSS leadership is groomed and mentored—Narendra Modi, the current Gujarat state Chief Minister, also referred to as the Butcher of Gujarat for his role during the 2002 Gujarat genocide, was a prominent leader of the ABVP before being inducted into the RSS and BJP.106 ABVP has a reputation for violence, vituperation and hooliganism, and is often used by the Sangh to disrupt progressive events on campuses, carry out moral policing and enforce a socially conservative agenda in universities.

Hindu Students Council (HSC): Launched initially by the VHP of America, this is now officially an autonomous organization with branches in many universities across the US. While attempting to distance itself from the Sangh, HSC actively promotes the Sangh’s ideology under the guise of liberal Hindu socio-religious thought. It works primarily with second generation Indian Americans with a project of bringing them under the influence of Hindutva. It serves to introduce the concepts of Hindutva in university spaces, mobilize the diasporic student population around the issues of an embattled Hindu identity and legitimize the Sangh family of organizations as valid representatives of the Hindu diasporic community.

Bajrang Dal is the paramilitary wing of the VHP, and was started in 1984 to provide muscle and manpower to the VHP agitations. The Bajrang Dal regularly organizes arms training camps for its members, where it teaches them the use of firearms and trishuls (tridents). According to one of the participants, the training is imparted in order to teach them “how to beat those who do not respect Hinduism.”107 Bajrang Dal has been at the forefront of recent communal attacks against Christians in the tribal regions, against artists and intellectuals and against Muslims in Gujarat.

HinduUnity.org is a US and Israel-based website that claims to be the official website of the Bajrang Dal. This site is a virulent hate-filled site that has already once been yanked by a web-hosting service because of the venom that it spews, and its frequent calls to violence against specific individuals and against Muslims in general. A typical passage from the Website under the pop-up window called Hindu Force is given below as a sample:

Revenge on Islam must become the sole aim of the life of every Hindu today. Islam has been shedding Hindu blood for several centuries. This is something we should neither forget nor forgive. This sinister religion has been striking at Hinduism for just too long. It is time we resist this satanic force and kick it back into the same pit it crawled out of.

Seva Vibhag: The Service Wing of the Hindutva Movement is the RSS’s most incoherent structure. However, in its very incoherence lies its ingenuity. The service wing operates through hundreds of organizations spread across the country—many different names and functions—all presented as if they were entirely independent organizations. This proliferation of Seva Vibhag projects as different organizations gives an impression of seeming independence, however, it is also the most inconspicuous way of placing swayamsevaks distributed across the country and creating entry points for them to do their ideological work. Often it is difficult to place an organization as an RSS Seva Vibhag operation. It takes systematic matching of organizational trustees with other known RSS operations to establish the links. The role of the Seva Vibhag as an entry point to do the core ideological work of the Sangh creates some long term patterns and institutions. For instance, education offers an effective cover for ideological work and the remaking of identities. Thus many Seva Vibhag operations are crafted as educational activities. Following such patterns it becomes possible to identify Vidya Bharati as an RSS operation. Similarly, it becomes possible to identify a whole range of organizations that work with tribals (adivasis) as RSS operations because the adivasis are an important target constituency for the RSS. These multitude of projects, besides doing the core work of spreading the ideology of the Sangh, also serve as conduits for the collection of funds from India and from the diaspora under the guise of “development” and “relief.”

India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF): IDRF is the US based funding arm of the Sangh and primarily funds the Sangh through its Seva Vibhag operations. IDRF claims to have no formal relationship with the Sangh, but an overwhelming majority of the money raised by it is earmarked for Sangh programs in India.108 Given that money raised from the diasporic Indian community is critical for sustaining the Sangh operations in India, it is not surprising to note the prominent place that IDRF enjoys in the Sangh hierarchy in the US. It is closely associated with all Sangh Parivar outposts in the US; office bearers at VHPA, OFBJP, HSS and HSC are also intimately engaged with the running of IDRF, and all these groups have raised money for IDRF at different occasions. IDRF is directly connected to Sewa International, the part of the Seva Vibhag that coordinates international Seva activity.